When Cutting Access to Health Care, There’s a Price to Pay<br />Another assessment, published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine, found<br />that access to health insurance increases screenings for cholesterol and cancer, raises the number of patients taking needed diabetes medication, reduces depression, and raises the number of low-income Americans who get timely surgery for colon cancer.<br />A study about equity in access to health care for 21 countries in 2000 revealed<br />that the United States had the highest degree of inequity in doctor use, even higher than Mexico — which is both poorer and generally more inequitable.<br />Of course, the dismal health situation is not all the fault of the health care system — which, until the passage of the Affordable Care Act, was the only one in the developed world<br />that routinely barred access or limited care for millions of people of modest means.<br />“Each year, other high-income countries are improving their health at a much faster rate than the United States,<br />and the United States currently ranks lowest on a variety of health measures,” the report by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council noted.<br />Americans, they found, had the second-highest mortality from noncommunicable conditions — like<br />diabetes, heart disease or violence — and the fourth highest from infectious disease.
